


Unexpectedly Festive

by luvanderwon



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Pining, Raphael is a poetic disaster, festivebastion, probably bad decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:38:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The winter before Havemercy takes place, the Airman is being decorated to within an inch of its life, Raphael is pining, Ghislain is making boozy punch, and Ivory isn't actually as scary and aloof as he pretends to be. Also featuring: gingerbread, smug Luvander and hints of drunk Raphael reciting poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unexpectedly Festive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/gifts).



> This was an unfilled prompt for the festivebastion gift exchange and I felt inspired :)

For some reason, Jeannot seemed to think it was a good idea to try to decorate Ivory’s piano while he was still playing it. Jeannot was wrong. Raphael watched from the safe crook of the corner of the sofa, his eyes half drunk with not reading his book of Ramanthine poetry. He had mentally given Jeannot less than three minutes before things got ugly. 

It was – astonishingly – Rook’s idea that they decorate the Airman for Christmas. Well, Rook’s and Compagnon’s and Evariste’s, really. The three of them had come stumbling in from an evening in the ‘Fans two nights ago, rowdy and carousing but not horribly drunk, and full of the joys of a lavishly decked out receiving room, or something. Raphael hadn’t been listening, because Ivory had been tapping out a tiny, almost-cheerful tune up in the high notes, like the tinkling of snowflakes against a window. Compagnon had been giggling something about unorthodox uses for festive garlands, and Evariste had been verbally daydreaming about seasonal garters or Christmas stockings or some such. And then Rook had thrown himself on the other sofa and complained that the common room was “fuckin’ miserable looking after all that fancy ribbons and ivy shit”, which translated (according to Jeannot and Luvander, who were also present) as “we should decorate”. 

So decorating was what they were doing – and had been doing for the past two days, since there were no raids at the moment. It started with Luvander, Niall and Jeannot making a trip to one of Niall’s favourite actress friends and begging some props, which they dragged home in a sack and exploded all over the common room. Raphael had never seen stage costumes repurposed quite like that before. Then Magoughin and Compagnon had gone to the market and returned with an outrageous amount of greenery, bundling it all through the doorway in front of them in fits of laughter so it looked rather like a cackling forest was invading the Airman. Raphael had been quite startled, since he’d been busy at that precise moment trying to remember the exact shape that Ivory’s limbs had been in that time he’d fallen asleep in the kitchen after a two-raid night, and Raphael had caught the tiniest glimpse of that before he’d jerked awake and he’d never forgotten – would never forget the way Ivory’s body had, for a moment, lost its taut precision and eerie, angular stillness. He’d been thinking about writing an ode on the moment, except then the chuckling greenery had shown up. It was just as well. Poetry was a risk in the Airman at the best of times, but poetry about one of the boys, written in his own hand... that was tantamount to composing his own death warrant, if a man could die from mortification by his fellows, which Raphael firmly believed that he could. 

By now, the third day, there were festoons of greenery dripping from every surface, prickling with shiny glass and glittery baubles which had shown up from bastion only knew where, and been fallen on by Merritt, who had a subtle weakness for shiny things, and Luvander, whose weakness was not subtle at all. Adamo had poked his head around the door at some point, rolled his eyes and muttered something dark and serious about grown men and crepe paper, asked Balfour why all the Christmas decorations in the world had chosen today to come here and vomit their festive sickness on his living quarters, and retreated to his office. Naturally, this meant that several of the boys had moved on to plotting how to get him out of his office so they could deposit a few hundred of the decorations there to die, too. “Preferably the gaudiest,” Niall had said gleefully, to frantic approval. 

The only Airman who had disdained from getting himself involved in any fashion at all was Ivory. Ghislain was brewing a spiced punch so thick with booze that Raphael felt drunk just from the smell. His eyes were watering with the clovey mix of cinnamon, rum, apples and cherry wine that bubbled and simmered from the kitchen. Raphael couldn’t decide, at this point in time, whether he wanted to drink any of this concoction or not – on the one hand, it smelled amazing and, knowing Ghislain’s skills with a punch bowl, probably tasted even better. On the other hand, however, knowing Ghislain’s skills with a punch bowl, it was likely to be so incredibly inebriating that he’d be left lying on the floor reciting nonsense poetry about Ivory’s cheekbones and sobbing, and he’d have no one to blame but himself. 

“Are you alright, Raphael,” Luvander interrupted his nutmeg reverie by perching himself delicately on the edge of Raphael’s sofa, a fantastic arrangement of holly berries and crisp, sparkling twine sitting lopsided on his head and a piece of what looked and smelt like gingerbread nibbling between his fingers. Raphael started. He’d been watching the straight line of Ivory’s back and appreciating the delicate, blue-veined way his head inclined to the right as he thought about the notes he wanted to tease next from the old piano. He’d almost forgotten to pay attention to Jeannot’s unacceptably meticulous administration of shimmering tinsel. “You look,” Luvander waved his hand in a giddy, foppish sort of loop and pursed his lips, searching for the right term, “unfestive.” 

“I am perfectly festive, thank you,” Raphael replied, keeping his eyes on the piano. “What the fuck have you got on your head?” 

“This?” Luvander indicated the riotous collection of Christmas he was currently sporting. “This is a festive chapeau. I am the very spirit of Christmas.” 

“You’re the very spirit of a festive fucking cindy,” Rook amended as he sauntered past with a mug full of Ghislain’s punch. Luvander didn’t even bother to correct him. 

“Thought you might want to know,” he leaned closer to murmur in Raphael’s ear instead, “you’re staring quite a lot. People other than me are going to start noticing, and not everybody’s had punch yet. Just a head’s up, petal.” 

“Mm,” Raphael hummed, shifting so he could see around Jeannot, who was leaning treacherously close to Ivory now. “What?” 

“You’ve been staring at our illustrious pianist for even longer than normal,” Luvander announced without the courtesy to lower his voice. Raphael felt himself flush, low on his neck and high on his cheeks, because Ivory had excellent hearing – sharp like a dog, Rook always said. 

“I’m just,” he started, and swallowed, his mouth disarmingly dry. Perhaps he should have some of Ghislain’s punch after all. “I wanted to – I’m just watching to make sure Jeannot doesn’t get himself stabbed, that’s all.” 

“Right,” Luvander chuckled, and patted Raphael on the head like the patronising bastard he was. “You keep telling yourself that, darling.” 

~

Jeannot escaped with all of his limbs still intact. This was a marvel worth celebrating, Raphael thought, and allowed himself a small cup of punch and a square of the very spicy, cardamom-infused gingerbread that Ace (surprise Airman baker extraordinaire) and Niall had cooked up. He made it a large cup of punch after his first bite of gingerbread, which was more ginger than bread, Ace grinned and announced, patting Raphael on the back as he coughed around the peppery sweet explosion on the back of his tongue. 

By the time he got up from the kitchen, his head was already spinning. 

By the time he got back to the common room, he’d forgotten why he got up from the kitchen (which was to answer the suddenly pressing question of how, exactly, Jeannot had survived with his limbs intact). And by the time he sank back against the sofa cushions in the common room, he couldn’t remember why he’d ever left them in the first place, especially since Ivory was still playing his now decorated piano. 

The rest of the Airmen were now crowded around the punch bowl while Ghislain looked on smugly and counted hangover percentages in his quietly evil brain, so it was just Raphael and Ivory in the common room. Correction: it was just Raphael watching Ivory in the common room, a fact he was made aware of when Ivory’s fingers stilled and he said, so quietly Raphael thought he might have imagined it: “you’re staring again.” 

Raphael’s tongue was a thick slur of rum in his mouth, and he had to think very hard about how to move it to say “mmm” in agreement. 

Ivory pressed a low, gentle note three times slowly, and glanced at Raphael over his shoulder. His pale hair was escaping its ponytail and a strand swung forward, obscuring his eyes. There was a glimmer of silver that caught in the light, and Raphael felt his throat make a scratched crack of a noise. 

“I quite like Christmas,” Ivory said, then, and Raphael wanted to cry because Ghislain’s punch was roiling in his stomach and there was heat in his chest and Ivory was terrifying and beautiful but he quite liked Christmas. 

“I didn’t think you liked anything,” he said, his tongue blunted with rum and spices. 

Ivory slid himself off the piano stool and stretched himself out, long and limber, vertebrae stacking up and shaking down. His skin echoed in the shifting, twinkling Christmas lights the other boys had strung up around the windows. Raphael watched him like he was magic. 

“There’s only three things I really like,” Ivory said softly, head to one side like he was considering the words before he said them. He loped across the room, panther strides and stealth, towards Raphael as he listed, slowly, “that instrument, Christmas, and...”

“And?” Raphael repeated, breathless, his head too warm and too unsteady. He gazed up at the silhouetted shape of Ivory against the light. 

“Hm,” Ivory’s mouth shifted to one side, hooked up in the corner in the tiniest flicker of a smirk. Raphael couldn’t tell if it was really a smile, but it was Ivory, so any inflection was something to treasure. He focused hard on trying to pin the image in his mind forever, trap it like a butterfly under staples in a museum, so he could keep it in his Christmas dreams and compose sonnets about it in his head. Raphael focused so hard on that, in fact, that he almost missed Ivory adding “and you” to the end of his list.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [of pralines and poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8245268) by [nerakrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerakrose/pseuds/nerakrose)




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